these transcripts are personal emails between myself and Dr Gilbert.
Permission is required to copy.

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I recognise these photographs as being from an Australian
rock depiction which supposedly has evidence of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
I believe that the inscription is a modern forgery, and not a good one
at that.

As far as translation is concerned, the inscription has
several features which were copied from several 'modern' publications of
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, however the greater part of the inscription
cannot be translated as it is nothing more than a collection hieroglyphs
which do not form words or phrases. The exception, which seems to prove
conclusively that this is a modern copy, is the copy of the king's names
and titles found within photo e5r. In this photo, the large box on the
left (which should be a cartoush) is headed by the Sedge Plant and Bee
title which means 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt', while the name within
the box is 'Khufu', who was in fact the 4th dynasty king of Egypt who built
the Great Pyramid at Giza (ie. he is very well known). The box on the right
is headed by a Duck and Sun title which means 'Son of Re', while the name
within the box is unknown but possible could be read as 'Neferankhru'.
Interestingly this name is written similar to Khufu's fathers name Sneferu'
but has used an Ankh sign instead of a Rolled linen sign. So if we were
to believe this inscription we would think that it was of Khufu of the
4th dynasty, unfortunately the 'Son of Re' title was not used until the
5th dynasty and hence this creates a major problem in our believing this
text. You should perhaps read the few pages on kings names in pages 267-73
of An Introduction to Egypt by T.G.H. James, which is available in most
libraries. To summarise the text cannot be translated although it has several
hieroglyphs which could represent names from several different periods
of Egyptian history.

Other reasons that confirm the inscription is a forgery,
include (but not limited to) - Many of the hieroglyphic characters are
drawn incorrectly, and in Ancient Egypt if you did not draw the 'chick
bird' or the 'cartoush' correctly the words just would not work, and this
is especially true during the reign of Khufu and his successors when the
hieroglyphs where the finest of all periods. - Direction of hieroglyphic
characters are frequently incorrect, for example the title 'King of Upper
and Lower Egypt' is facing the opposite direction to that of the name 'Khufu'.
Such errors were just unheard of in Ancient Egypt, although it is interesting
that during Greco-Roman times pseudo hieroglyphs were sometimes used by
persons who could not read or write hieroglyphs but thought they looked
good. The rock inscription has similar faults as these pseudo hieroglyphs,
so whoever wrote them most likely did not read or write Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- The art of placing inscriptions on rock outcrops varied over time, whereas
early rock inscriptions in Egypt tend to be fluid (especially when hieroglyphs
were not yet developed), by the time of the 4th dynasty kings, rock inscriptions
would typically have been left raised above a smoothed flat base (ie carefully
carved by skilled craftsmen) this would have been especially true for royal
inscriptions depicting the king's name.

> Are these glyphs relatively famous to the> local circle of the Egyptologically Interested?

I personnally saw them referenced on a general search
on hieroglyphs, and thought they may have been hieroglyphs on an object
in a private collection. When I saw the photographs I quickly saw them
as 'recent' copies and moved on. I do not think many Australian Egyptologists
would have more than a passing interest, although it may be a good exercise
for a senior high school class studying Ancient History of Egypt to gather
evidence to refute the claims. Most scholars would not take them seriously,
although the inscription may be of interest to those studying Egyptomania
(or the study of how ancient Egypt has influenced modern cultures).

> Notwithstanding its exaggerated style, to my untrained
approach the> problems the article presents are> 1 the claim that "....The hieroglyphs were> extremely ancient, in the archaic style of the early
dynasties. This> archaic style is very little known> and untranslatable by most Egyptologists who are all
trained to read Middle Egyptian upward.."

The classic Egyptian dictionaries only handle Middle Egyptian,
and there are few people in the world who can read and translate the early
formative style. The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs are dated to the rise
of the Egyptian state and are normally referrred to as belonging to Dynasty
0 (before King Aha, first king of Dynasty 1). The archaic period is a term
sometimes used for the first two Egyptian Dynasties, ie. Dynasty 1 and
2 now normally referred to as Early Egypt, during which time the early
hieroglyphs evolved and were refined so that simple groups of hieroglyphs
representing a person's name (for example) later developed into relatively
lengthy hieroglyphic lists giving a person's titles, names and offering
formulae. See A.J. Spencer, Early Egypt: The rise of civilisation in the
Nile Valley, 1995, as an introduction. Throughout the predynastic and early
dynastic periods the language itself seems to have remained the same, while
the changes in the hieroglyphic inscriptions seem to represent the evolution
of how to write the spoken language. The basic Egyptian language, as spoken,
seems to have remained largely the same for at least the first two thousand
years of Dynastic Egypt, hence the hieroglyphic language of the Middle
Kingdom is very similar to that of the Old Kingdom, and indeed the Early
Dynastic Period. Over time the writing of the Egyptian language was refined
so that the meaning became clearer as the grammatical construction was
written in more standard forms. Now modern Egyptologists initially learn
Middle Egyptian (ie. language of Middle Kingdom texts) to obtain a basic
knowledge of the language. They then typically study Old Kingdom documents,
Early New Kingdom documents, Late New Kingdom documents, and Early Dynastic
inscriptions in order to better understand each period. Once again most
of the language remains constant over this large time period, and hence
there are few differences between the Middle Kingdom and Archaic Egyptian
language, although the written hieroglyphs are like comparing Old English
with Modern English. Early Dynastic hieroglyphs have been intensively studied
by Egyptologists, refer to P. Kaplony, Die Inschriften der agyptischen
Fruhzeit,(3 vols.), 1963-71; and J. Kahl, Das system der agyptischen Hieroglyphenschrift
in der 0-3 Dynastie, 1994.

[quote from article.htm]>".. Because the old style contains early forms of glyphs
that correlate>with archaic Phoenician and Sumerian sources one can> see how the university researchers who saw>them could so easily have thought them to be bizarre> and ill-conceived > forgeries.The ageing Egyptologist
Ray Johnson, who had translated extremely> ancient texts for the Museum of Antiquities in>Cairo eventually was successful in documenting and> translating the two facing walls of Egyptian characters.
…>which stemmed from the Third Dynasty..."

It is relatively simple to suggest that Sumerian pictoglyphs
or the much later Phoenician pictoglyphs are mixed with the Egyptian hieroglyphs,
but this would be bizarre. Imagine a mix of three cultures from three different
periods writing a single document. Say a Medieval Spaniard with an Aztec
king and a Modern Englishman writing a sentence using their three languages
for some of the letters or words? THe assertion that the Australian inscription
is of Dynasty 3 cannot be supported. As stated in my previous email the
King's name in the cartouche was of a Dynasty 4 king, and the cartouse
itself was not used until the reign of King Sneferu, first king of Dynasty
4. I do not personnally know Ray Johnson, although the Oriental Institute
of Chicago has a Raymond W Johnson on their books, (search for OI web site:
List of North American Egyptologists). If this is the same authority, I
would suggest that he may have been misquoted somehow!

Final comment, the aim of scholarly endeavour is to better
understand our environment by considering available evidence in a scientific
manner. However the evidence as we see it is subject to the prejudices
and constraints of the our own culture. The resulting conflict between
science and belief remain a paradox which cannot be resolved.